In Quite A Pickle!

klutch

Im in a bit of a bind and am hoping some of you can make suggestions to help.

I am down to the final room in the house we bought last year to be painted (master bedroom). The entire house has knock down texturing on all the walls and ceilings. Well we also have chair rail in the M bedroom. The genius before us decided to put wallpaper border up around the entire room just above the chair rail. From what I can tell because of the knock down texturing they had a hard time getting the border to stick (imagine that!). It appears they have used some sort of extra adhesive to help hold the border up. I have gotten all the wallpaper down but now have tons of places that the adhesive they applied has basically filled in the areas around the texturing creating almost smooth places on the walls around the entire room. I cannot seem to get the adhesive off and am afraid to work it too hard in fear of grinding the texturing itself down. I spot painted a couple of places hoping it wouldn't be that noticeable and as you can imagine it is. I need to get this stuff off. I have tried Goof Off and that seems to break it down a little but you still have to scrub a lot and as I said above I am afraid I'll start working the texture itself off. Anyone have advice on either removing it or something different I could do to the walls?

slickshift

Well the technical term that we would use for that situation would be:
Nightmare

I'm assuming you want to keep the texture? (The first two suggestions that come to mind involve...well not keeping it)

Most regular wallpaper adhesive should come off relatively easily
Do you think it is difficult to remove because of the nature of the adhesive used (not regular), or because of the texture?

If it's the type of adhesive, then you need to find the right solvent, if it's the texture, then more scrubbing with a good brush is in order

Glasshousebltr

Try throwing a hair dryer and some soapy water to it. Just an idea, a little heat can make a big difference with some adhesives.

Bob

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Bob

klutch

I think it's a bit of both. The adhesive doesn't just dissolve. The border came off without too much trouble but it's fairly obvious to me that they had trouble getting it to stick (probably because of the texture) so they applied some other sort of glue. Besides that it is difficult to isolate the scrubing of it to not affect the texturing.

I've thought of skimcoating the entire walls as we'd prefer them smooth anyhow but am unsure if skimcoating would cover up something like knockdown texture. The other thing I've thought of is scraping the texture off along all the walls were the border was and trying to retexture that area....

Teetorbilt

I had a similar problem about 4 yrs. ago. Mom had cut out Pooh, Eyore and lots of bunny rabbits and stuck them to the walls with whatever glue WallyWorld had on sale that day, 3 or 4 different types. I had to sand down to the paper in some spots with a detail sander.

I think that you are going to have a similar problem. Even if you can find a way to remove it the rubbing is going to remove the edges of the knockdown and leave a different type of spot. Maybe someone will come along with a magic bullet, right now I'm thinking skimcoat or sanding.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

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slickshift

Can you test a small area with a putty knife?
I have successfully "smoothed" textured walls by having at them with large putty knives, good sized sanders, and a skim coat or two
This has been after the first two or three guys said they'd have to re-drywall

If you'd really rather it smooth, it's worth a test
As long as the putty knife pulls off most of the texture (it'll leave little holes I'm sure) it should be do-able

Mike Finley

I would re-texture over the entire mess, or skim coat over the entire mess.

klutch

Would you just apply another coat of texturing over the top of the existing or remove the old stuff? My existing stuff has been painted over before and don't know how easy it would let go if I were to scrape it off.

Will

Slick got it right in.. Nightmare.

I do drywall and have run across this a few times. Easiest solution for me since I do drywall is always, rip it all out and put up new and it will be perfect.

Depending on how deep the texture is, you could be skimcoating for weeks if you don’t scrape it off. That is of course unless that texture isn't that deep, but what I have seen it was all deep. And if its painting, good luck scraping because that is a real pain. If it wasn't painted you could simple wet it with a garden sprayer and it would slide off, but painted texture is pure evil.

As big of a mess as ripping out drywall and replacing it sounds.. scraping, sanding, multiple skimcoats in hopes it will turn out nice can be a much bigger mess.

Mike Finley

Sprayed right over it, paint and all. I don't know if the professional painters or drywallers would recomend doing it this way, but anytime I am texturing a patch the blended part is right over painted texture. The same goes for spraying an entire wall when fixing a patch and not wanting to deal with the blending.

Everything is knock down texture out here so its really easy to deal with a situation like yours. If you have some kind of crazy course texture now, I would just go over it really fast with a power sander and knock the peaks off it, then the knock down would hide everything else.

But that's me and works around here.

JustaFramer

don't try heavy knock down out of a can. hehehe

thepaintman80

Sounds like the wall wasn't sized and no enamel undercoater was used. Two big problems. The adhesive probably went into the wall (since there was no enamel undercoater to hold out the adhesive). You are probably going to lose the knock down but don't dispair. Some Homax knockdown texture will fix it. I would try a some wallparer adhesive remover and soak to area. You could also try a steamer.

Good Luck